Using a tablet as a touchpad for desktops

[kevinsbane]

While I was fiddling around with viewing PDFs on my Nexus 7, I got an idea. Is there an app, or any technical way to use a touchscreen tablet as an interactive touchscreen extension for your desktop/laptop computer? Essentially making your tablet into a gigantic touchpad for your desktop. Sort of like Apple's magic pad.

The basic functionality would be essentially the same as the magic pad, with multi-touch gestures, except you could have a custom "on-the-fly" DPI control for fine control if needed.

Advanced functionality could include mirroring of the desktop screen (with the appropriate "zoom" level for your DPI, so you could control the mouse pointer at 1-to-1 precision on the tablet screen), hotswapping to keyboard mode, numpad mode, custom gestures...

 

[cronos]

AirMouse does this on the iPhone and iPod Touch (and I suppose iPad as well), and it's pretty slick.

There must be an Android equivalent out there somewhere.

 

[postmortemIA]

gmote can be used as a mouse + keyboard in android world, but it is meant to be media remote.

 

[xSauronx]

AirMouse does this on the iPhone and iPod Touch (and I suppose iPad as well), and it's pretty slick.

There must be an Android equivalent out there somewhere.

http://www.unifiedremote.com/

this is pretty similar, i havent used any of the customizations but i like the app for the built in remotes (what i have used so far) pretty well

 

[Eug]

Adobe® Nav for Photoshop®

Off topic:

P.S. Google needs to work on its Android copy/paste interface, and interface when entering stuff in message entry boxes like on the AnandTech forums. It's annoying.

 

[kevinsbane]

AirMouse does this on the iPhone and iPod Touch (and I suppose iPad as well), and it's pretty slick.

There must be an Android equivalent out there somewhere.

I tried a number of Android equivalents (including the one that Airmouse developers made) but... they suck D: They're pretty slow and laggy; more like a remote desktop style feedback cycle. Aside from the silly free trial versions having popups "buy me buy me buy me", they don't work like an actual touchpad. Very much like a laggy remote control.

Is it technically possible to do a direct link (via USB/bluetooth) as opposed to going through wifi such that your tablet will actually present itself as a bluetooth mouse?

 

[psych2]

Give Unified Remote a try, I love it to bits 😉

https://play.google.com/store/apps/...251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5SZWxtdGVjaC5SZW1vdGUiXQ..

 

[AstroManLuca]

Gmote works okay. I wouldn't want to use it day in day out, but it works for controlling an HTPC.

 

[kevinsbane]

Give Unified Remote a try, I love it to bits 😉

https://play.google.com/store/apps/...251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5SZWxtdGVjaC5SZW1vdGUiXQ..

Mmm, Unified Remote works almost as good as a native touchpad; I do notice the lag, but it's much better (over bluetooth right now). I think it's good enough to go for the paid version, especially if i can customize it to work with AutoCAD.

 

[twill713]

I'm using DriodMote right now it has mouse functionality, works as a media controller and also as a gamepad.